Page 111 of The Reformatory

“Are you even listening? I can’t stall anymore,” Robert said. “They know I’m lying.”

But Blue went on as if Robert hadn’t spoken. “So if I get you the key by tomorrow, Thursday at the latest, you’ll have plenty of time to swipe the package of photos and that jar of ash so you can meet your sister. Isn’t that what you want? To meet your sister by the railroad tracks Friday night?”

His voice seemed a shout to Robert.

“You thought I didn’t know?” Robert heard the smile in Blue’s voice. Blue’s laugh spilled from the ceiling.

“Shhhhhh,” Robert said.

He rushed to the next stall to try to shush Blue, maybe even try to shake him, but the steam broke apart like parting curtains and Blue wasn’t there.

“I’ll do what you say,” Robert said to the empty stall. “But you have to help us too. If you don’t…” He almost told how Redbone might give Blue up. Hell, how hard would it be to tell Boone to come sprinkle his dust in this shower stall? The first stall he’d used when he arrived, he reminded himself. The one where Mama had found him in the pipe.

“If I don’t what?” Blue’s voice said in his ear.

Robert whirled around, terrified at the idea of Blue standing behind him. But when he whipped around, Blue wasn’t there—just the empty bathroom and the row of sinks. Except… in the reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink, Blue was standing beside him. He was dressed in a blue work shirt so big on him that his head barely poked out, like a turtle’s.

Gasping, Robert took a step back, looking right and left for Blue. But the only Blue was in the mirror, staring intently at Robert with glowering eyes. “You’ll tell Boone about me?” he said, the voice still close to his ear. “You’ll bring him in here to trap me?”

“No,” Robert said, swatting Blue’s voice away from his ear. “You know I can’t.” Only because of Mama, although he didn’t say it. “But I called you,” Robert said, fumbling for any words that might sway Blue. “I called your name.”

Now Blue looked intrigued. “So?”

“If something happens to me or Redbone, who’s gonna call your name then? Does anyone remember you except me and Redbone… and Haddock?”

Blue’s head lolled to one side, his ear resting on his shoulder. He stared at Robert from that odd pose in the reflection for a long time, no longer sneering. His head had fallen too far, with no bones to hold it. Was he trying to scare him again? Or just thinking it over?

“You need me just like I need you,” Robert said, lowering his voice so no one in the hall would hear him and so Boone wouldn’t come running with his leather pouch. “I’m the only one you can talk to whenever you want. Redbone can’t even hardly see you sometimes.” Blue pursed his lips. He didn’t like hearing that. Or maybe he didn’t like that Redbone had told him so much. “So you need to be nice to me, Blue,” Robert said firmly.

Blue’s reflection disappeared, an empty space. A corner of the mirror cracked away, shattering a triangle of glass tinkling into the sink.

“Stop it,” Robert hissed, rushing to retrieve the broken pieces. He wrapped them inside a crumpled paper towel he found in the trash can and buried it at the bottom. Would someone notice the new damage to the mirror? He hoped he wouldn’t get blamed for it. He turned on the faucet to wash any other slivers down the sink. “You want Boone to come in here? I know you don’t, so stop doing… haint stuff.”

“That’s an ugly word,” Blue said. This time he was sitting on the floor of the shower stall behind Robert in solid form, like any other boy, watching him work to clean up his mess.

“Haint. Evil-sounding word. Like I’m a jumbee trying to walk in your skin the way talkers say in the old stories. I’m not the one who set the fire, am I? Am I the one dragging boys out to the shed?” The island lilt in Blue’s accent was clearer now. Blue was revealing more of his true self.

“What should I call you, then?”

“Trapped,” Blue said. “Dirtied. We died dirty—until you fix it.”

Robert wrapped his towel around his waist and sat beside Blue, careful not to touch him so he wouldn’t feel that too-cool skin that wasn’t living flesh. Even the space beside Blue felt colder than the rest of the shower stall.

“I can’t do anything until Friday,” Robert said. “Until it’s time. You said you’d help me.”

“Sure I will. Any small thing’ll get Haddock to go running out of his office. I can set the dogs off barking and yelping, I’ll scare ’em so bad. Dogs lose their mind around haints. I know he’ll come look after his dogs. He’ll think someone gave them rat poison. Then you can get in through his window.”

“But I need a hai—… I need someone else,” Robert said. “For the jar.” Blue shook his head, firm.

“Blue, listen: Redbone’s going with me,” Robert said. “I told him all about it. He’s so smart, we’re sure to get away. You said I just have to set the ashes loose in the creek, right? And then they’ll be set free?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’ll be set free too?”

“I’m already free,” Blue said. “I’m more free than you! We have a pact: we all stay until Haddock’s gone. We stay until everyone knows how dirty we died.”

“Then it doesn’t matter who goes in the jar, right? They’ll come right back out.”